Shoutout to the guy at the Omaha meat market who told me to stop grinding my own chuck for burgers

He said his shop's 80/20 pre-ground has way less oxidation and stays pinker, and honestly he was right. Anyone else have a supplier they trust for ground beef over doing it in-house?

3 comments

3 Comments

rileyjones3mo ago

Omaha meat market? That's the same place that got shut down for a week last year over health code stuff, right? I remember reading the report about their grinder cleaning logs. How can you trust their pre-ground over your own fresh chuck? The whole point of grinding at home is you see exactly what goes in.

skyler_white953mo ago

That health code thing @rileyjones mentioned, what was the actual problem?

anna_hill1mo ago

@skyler_white95 the real problem wasn't even the grinder itself. It was the cleaning logs like rileyjones said. They weren't keeping track of when they took it apart and sanitized the auger and blade assembly. Without that, old meat bits get trapped in the housing and you get bacterial growth. You can see it happen at home too if you don't break down your grinder after each use. Ground chuck is the worst for this because the fat gets forced into every little gap. So for their pre-ground, the issue was they probably weren't cleaning between batches of different meats. Cross contamination risk with beef that might have been ground right after chicken or pork. That's how you get people sick without even cooking it enough. @skyler_white95 if you really want to be safe, always grind your own and clean the grinder parts with hot soapy water between each batch, not just a quick rinse. Took me one bad experience to learn that lesson.